In recent years, as an environmentally friendly vehicle, a vehicle has been drawing attention which has a power storage device (for example, a secondary battery, a capacitor, or the like) and travels using driving power resulting from electric power stored in the power storage device. Examples of such a vehicle include an electric vehicle, a hybrid vehicle, a fuel cell vehicle, and the like. There have been proposed techniques of charging the power storage device of each of these vehicles using a commercial power source, which is high in power generation efficiency.
Among hybrid vehicles, there has been also known a vehicle which has a power storage device chargeable from a power source external to the vehicle (hereinafter, also simply referred to as “external power source”) as with electric vehicles. For example, a so-called “plug-in hybrid vehicle” has been known which has a power storage device chargeable from a power source of a general house when connecting a power receptacle of the house and a charging port of the vehicle to each other via a charging cable. In this way, improved fuel consumption efficiency can be expected in the hybrid vehicle.
Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2003-244832 (PTL 1) discloses a technique for prohibiting charging of a battery of an electric vehicle when a reel type cord, which is provided in the vehicular body to serve as a charging cord to charge the battery, is in a reeled state.
According to the technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2003-244832 (PTL 1), a storage space for the charging cord can be made small while restraining heat generation of the charging cord.